Historic Fredericksburg: The Story of an Old Town

John T. Goolrick

Historic Fredericksburg: The Story of an Old Town

FREDERICKSBURG

A Preface

Fredericksburg sprawls at the foot of the hills where the scented summer winds sweep over it out of the valley of brawling waters above. The grass grows lush in the meadows and tangles in the hills that almost surround it. In spring the flowers streak the lowlands, climb on the slopes, and along the ridges; and Autumn makes fair colors in the trees, shading them in blood crimson, weathered bronze, and the yellow of sunsets.

Over its shadowed streets hangs the haze of history. It is not rich nor proud, because it has not sought; it is quiet and content, because it has sacrificed. It gave its energy to the Revolution. It gave its heart to the Confederacy; and, once when it was thundered at by guns, and red flames twisted in its crumbling homes, it gave its soul and all it possessed to the South. It never abated its loyalty nor cried out its sorrows.

In Fredericksburg, and on the battlefields near it, almost thirty thousand men lay on the last couch in the shadowy forests and – we think – heard Her voice calling and comforting them. To the wounded, the Old Town gave its best, not visioning the color of their uniforms, nursing them back to life: And, broken and twisted and in poverty, it began to rebuild itself and gather up the shattered ideals of its dead past.

Out of its heart has grown simple kindness; out of its soul simple faith.

As I look out over the streets, (I knew them well when Lee and Jackson and Stuart, Lincoln and Grant and Hancock knew them too), they shimmer in the Autumn sun. Over them, as has ever seemed to me, hangs an old and haunting beauty. There may not be as great men here as long ago, but here are their descendants and the descendants of others like them. And he who comes among them will find loyal hearts and warm hand-clasps.

Ah, I know the old town. My bare feet ran along its unpaved walks and passed the cabins many a time in slavery days. I knew it in the Civil War and reconstruction days, and on and on till now: And it has not failed its duty.

Fredericksburg’s history brims with achievement and adventure. It has not been tried in this volume to tell all of these. I have tried to tell a simple story, with the flame of achievement burning on the shrines and the echoes of old days sweeping through it, like low winds in the pine woods; to make men and women more vivid than dates and numbers. I have tried to be accurate and complete and to vision the past, but above all, I have loved the things of which I have written.

There is no possibility of expressing the gratitude the author feels for the aid given him by others, but he must say, briefly, that without the assistance of Miss Dora Jett, Mrs. Franklin Stearns, Mrs. John T. Goolrick, and Dr. J. N. Barney, Mr. Chester B. Goolrick and Mr. John T. Goolrick, Jr., the book could not have been made as readable as we hope the public will find it. We owe just as deep thanks to Miss Sally Gravatt of the Wallace Library.

Jno. T. Goolrick.

Fredericksburg, Va.,

October 25, 1921.

INTRODUCTION

Rev. Robert Campbell Gilmore

As a public speaker of wide reputation, especially on Southern themes, Hon. John T. Goolrick, Judge of the Corporation Court of Fredericksburg, Va., needs no introduction. It is my privilege to introduce him as a writer of history to an ever widening circle of readers. Other men can gather facts and put them in logical order, but few can give the history of the old town of Fredericksburg such filial sympathy and interest, such beauty of local color, as can this loyal son.

The father, Peter Goolrick, a man of fine education, came from Ireland and made his home in Fredericksburg, and was mayor of the town.

The son has always lived here. The war between the States came in his boyhood. His first connection with the Confederacy was as a messenger at the Medical Department headquarters of General Lee. Growing old enough and tiring of protected service he enlisted in Braxton’s Battery of Fredericksburg Artillery. He was wounded at Fort Harrison, but recovering, returned to his command and served to the end of the war as “a distinguished private soldier,” and surrendered with “The last eight thousand” at Appomattox. Since the war he has been prominently connected with Confederate affairs. At one time he was Commander of the local Camp of Veterans and is now on the staff of the Commander of all the Veterans of the South and Virginia.

After the war young Goolrick studied law, was elected Judge of the Corporation Court of Fredericksburg, and of the County Court of Spotsylvania, served for a time as Commonwealth’s Attorney of Fredericksburg, and later was re-elected Judge of the Corporation Court, which position he has held for sixteen years, and which he now holds. He has been the inceptor often, and always a worker, in every public event in the town.

This is not Judge Goolrick’s first appearance as a writer. He has contributed many articles to newspapers, and magazines, and has published several books. He is thus particularly fitted to write the history of his own beloved town.

In the Older Days

One by one the little cabins are built along the river bank —

Enveloped in the perfume of old English boxwood and the fragrance of still older poplars, and permeated with the charm of a two hundred and fifty year old atmosphere, the town of Fredericksburg, Virginia, nestles in the soft foliage along the banks of the Rappahannock, at the point where the turbulent waters of the upper river rush abruptly against the back-wash of the sea, an odd but pleasing mixture of the old and the new.

Subtly rich with the elegance of the past, it looks proudly back across its two and a half centuries, but it has not forgotten how to live in the present, and combines delightfully all that it has of the old with much that is new and modern.

Perhaps no other community in the country has had a more intimate and constant association with the political and historic growth of America than Fredericksburg. From the earliest Colonial period, when it was a place of importance, it traces its influence on the nation’s development down through the Revolutionary war, the War of 1812, the Mexican and Civil wars and the periods of national progress between those conflicts, and even today, when the old town has lost its touch with affairs as an important community, it still can claim a close connection with events through the influence of its descendants – sons and daughters – who have gone forth in the world and achieved leadership in movements of the day that are aiding in shaping the destiny of mankind; and of these another chapter tells.

But while proud of the accomplishments of these, the old town does not depend upon them for distinction. It bases its claim to this on the events with which it actually has been associated, and the importance of the part it has played in the past is proved by data found in the recorded annals of the country.

The Spanish Missionaries

It might, indeed, if it sought historical recognition on accepted legend rather than known fact, assert an origin that antidates that of the first English permanent colony in America. A historian, writing in the Magazine of American History, says the spot now occupied by Fredericksburg was first discovered in 1571 by Spanish Missionaries, who erected there the first Christian shrine in America. It is almost certain the town was settled in 1621, three hundred years ago, but this cannot be definitely proven, and the town has not claimed it as a date in its established history. It does not claim to have had a beginning with the recorded arrival of Captain John Smith, one year after the settlement of Jamestown, but takes as its birthdate May 2d, 1671, at which time the site was legally recognized by a grant from Sir William Berkley, then Colonial governor, to John Royston and Thomas Buckner, who are looked upon as the real founders of community life at the spot now occupied by Fredericksburg.

Whether or not white men first reached the location as early as the suggested arrival of the Spanish Missionaries probably must always remain a mystery, though there are reasons to believe that this is entirely probable, as it is known that Spaniards made an early effort at colonization in Virginia, and in 1526 came up the James River from Haiti with six hundred people, and, with many negro slaves as workmen, founded the town of Miguel, near where Jamestown afterwards was established by Captain John Smith. It is probable that these pioneers ventured into the surrounding country, and not at all unlikely that some of them strayed as far as the falls of the Rappahannock.

But if the data are not sufficient to actually prove this early visit to the site, it is a fact of record in the diary of “Chirurgeon” Bagnall, a member of the party, that Captain Smith reached the spot in 1608, one year after the establishment of Jamestown, and after successfully disputing possession of the land with a tribe of Indians, disembarked and planted a cross, later prospecting for gold and other precious metals. The diary of Smith’s companions, still in existence, tells of the trip in accurate detail and from it is proven that even if the Spanish missionaries did not come as far as claimed for them, at least the Indians had recognized the natural advantages of the place by the establishment there of towns, which might have been in existence for hundreds of years.

Captain Smith’s First Visit

Captain Smith made two attempts to explore the Rappahannock. The first, in June, 1608, ended when the hardy adventurer in plunging his sword into “a singular fish, like a thornback with a long tail, and from it a poison sting,” ran afoul of the water monster and because of his sufferings was obliged to turn back. The second trip was started on July 24th, 1608, and was continued until the falls were reached.

Dr. Bagnall says in his diary that when near the mouth of the river, the party encountered “our old friend, Mosco, a lusty savage of Wighconscio, upon the Patawomeck,” who accompanied them as guide and interpreter, and upon reaching the falls did splendid service against the unfriendly Indians, “making them pause upon the matter, thinking by his bruit and skipping there were many savages.” In the fighting Captain Smith’s party captured a wounded Indian and much to the disgust of the cheerful Mosco, who wished to dispatch him forthwith, spared his life and bound his wounds. This work of mercy resulted in a truce with the Redmen, which made possible the final undisturbed settlement of the land by the whites, the prisoner interceding for Smith and his party.

Captain Smith’s first landing on the upper river probably was directly opposite what now is the heart of Fredericksburg. Dr. Bagnall’s diary says:

About The Indian Villages

“Between Secobeck and Massawteck is a small isle or two, which causes the river to be broader than ordinary; there it pleased God to take one of our company, called Master Featherstone, that all the time he had been in this country had behaved himself honestly, valiently and industriously, where in a little bay, called Featherstone’s bay, we buried him with a volley of shot * * *

“The next day we sailed so high as our boat would float, there setting up crosses and graving our names on trees.”

Captain Quinn, in his excellent History of Fredericksburg, says that Featherstone’s bay “is in Stafford, opposite the upper end of Hunter’s island,” but it is probable he did not closely examine facts before making this statement, as his own location of other places mentioned in Dr. Bagnall’s diary serves to disprove his contention as to the whereabouts of the bay.

“Seacobeck,” Captain Quinn says, “was just west of the city almshouse.” The almshouse was then situated where the residence of the President of the State Normal School now stands. Massawteck, Captain Quinn locates as “just back of Chatham.” If his location of these two places is correct, it is clear that the “small isle or two,” which the diary says was located between them, must have been at a point where a line drawn from the President’s residence, at the Normal School, to “just back of Chatham” would intersect the river, which would be just a little above the present location of Scott’s island, and that Featherstone’s bay occupied what now are the Stafford flats, extending along the river bank from nearly opposite the silk mill to the high bank just above the railroad bridge and followed the course of Claibourne’s Run inland, to where the land again rises. The contours of the land, if followed, here show a natural depression that might easily have accommodated a body of water, forming a bay.

There are other evidences to bear out this conclusion. Dr. Bagnall’s diary says: “The next day we sailed so high as our boat would float.” It would have been an impossibility to proceed “high” (meaning up) the river from Hunter’s island in boats, even had it been possible to go as high as that point. Notwithstanding contradictory legend, the falls of the Rappahannock have been where they are today for from five to one hundred thousand years, and there is no evidence whatever to indicate that Hunter’s Island ever extended into tidewater, the formation of the banks of the river about that point giving almost absolute proof that it did not.

No authentic data can be found to prove the continued use of the site as a settlement from Smith’s visit forward, though the gravestone of a Dr. Edmond Hedler, bearing the date 1617, which was found near Potomac run in Stafford county, a few miles from the town, would indicate that there were white settlers in the section early in the 17th century, and if this is true there is every reason to believe the falls of the Rappahannock were not without their share, as the natural advantages of the place for community settlement would have been appealing and attractive to the colonists, who would have been quick to recognize them.

In 1622, according to Howe’s history, Captain Smith proposed to the London Company to provide measures “to protect all their planters from the James to the Potowmac rivers,” a territory that included the Rappahannock section, which can be taken as another indication of the presence of settlers in the latter.

Establishment of the Town

The first legal record of the place as a community is had in 1671 – strangely enough just one hundred years after the reported coming of the Spaniards – when Thomas Royston and John Buckner were granted, from Sir William Berkley, a certain tract of land at “the falls of the Rappahannock.” This was on May 2d, and shortly afterward, together with forty colonists, they were established on what is now the heart of Fredericksburg, but known in those remote times as “Leaseland.” This is the date that Fredericksburg officially takes as its birthday, though additional evidence that colonists already were in that vicinity is had in the fact that the boundaries of the land described in the grant from Governor Berkley to the two early settlers, ended where the lands of one Captain Lawrence Smith began.

Major Lawrence Smith’s Fort

Three or four years after the grant was made to Buckner and Royston the “Grande Assemblie at James Cittie” took official cognizance of the Colony by ordering Major Lawrence Smith and one hundred and eleven men to the Falls of the Rappahannock for the purpose of protecting the colonists. Records in regard to this say, “At a Grande Assemblie at James Cittie, between the 20th of September, 1674, and the 17th of March, 1675, it was ordered that one hundred and eleven men out of Gloucester be garrisoned at one ffort or place of defense, at or near the falls of the Rappahannock river, of which ffort Major Lawrence Smith is to be captain or chief commander.” It was also ordered that “the ffort be furnished with four hundred and eight pounds of powder and fourteen hundred pounds of shott.”

A few years later, in 1679, Major Smith was authorized by the Jamestown government to mark out, below the falls of the Rappahannock, a strip of land one mile long and one-fourth of a mile wide, to be used as a colony and, together with eight commissioners, he was empowered to hold court and administer justice. Within this confine he was instructed to build habitations for two hundred and fifty men, fifty of whom were to be kept well armed and ready to respond to the tap of a drum. It would appear that the “ffort” mentioned in the earlier meeting of the “Grande Assemblie” was not built until this year. The contention that it was erected on the Stafford side of the river seems to be without any foundation of fact.

That the community was now growing seems to be proven by the fact that the same act, defining the limits mentioned above, also mentioned a larger district, defined as extending three miles above the fort and two miles below it for a distance of four miles back, over which Major Smith and his commissioners were to have jurisdiction. Two years later, in 1681, the little town received a great impetus when two hundred families came to join the colony. From this time forward, the community began to take an important part in the life of the Colonies.

In 1710, upon the invitation of Baron de Graffenried, a friend of Governor Spotswood, twelve German families came to America and settled on the Rapidan river, eighteen miles above Fredericksburg, opening the first iron mines and establishing the first iron works in America. They named the place Germanna, and, according to an account left by one of the party, “packed all their provisions from Fredericksburg,” then the principal trading point of the section.

In 1715, Governor Spotswood and the now-famed “Knights of the Golden Horseshoe,” started from Germanna (some of them came through Fredericksburg en route and stopped with Austin Smith). Assembling at Germanna they left on September 24th and continued across the Blue Ridge mountains to the Valley of Virginia. An interesting account of the trip, which has been made the theme of song and story, and even the basis of a secret society, can be found in the diary of John Fountaine, a member of the party.

For a period nothing seems to have happened to the community of sufficient importance to be recorded, and for the next few years the imagination must supply the story of the settlement. It probably was a village of irregular, straggling streets and indifferent houses, with a population that struggled for a living by trading, trapping and other pursuits of that day. Its stores were likely very good for those times, but across the river it had a rival in its neighbor, Falmouth, which as a place of importance was fast catching up with it, and soon was destined to pass it, for in 1720, seven years earlier than “The Leaseland,” it received its charter from the House of Burgesses at Williamsburg, who vested its government in seven trustees.

Falmouth’s Fast Growth

If not as a political and social center, at least as a trading point, Falmouth had soon superceded Fredericksburg. It was the market for all the grain of the upper country, which by this time was beginning to be settled, and was in direct commercial communication with England, Europe and the West Indies by ocean-going vessels, which, when under 140 tons burden, could come up to its wharves. It was a great milling center and its merchants began to grow prosperous and wealthy, one of them, Mr. Bazil Gordon, accumulating the first million dollars ever made in America, though he was the product of a little later date than that now under consideration.

Grain brought out of Falmouth in boats larger than 140 tons was first put upon barges or flat boats of large capacity, which were conveyed down the river to waiting vessels and transferred by slave labor. The stories heard of large vessels docking at the Falmouth wharves are apocryphal; no boat of great tonnage ever got as far as Falmouth. This may account for Fredericksburg’s final supremacy over Falmouth, which doubtless came about the time the first ferry was started, permitting the planters to cross the river with their grain and load directly to the waiting vessels, thus saving time and work, valuable considerations even in those days of abundant leisure and cheap slave labor.

“Leaseland” Is Chartered

But, while Falmouth was progressing “Leaseland” was also making strides, and in 1727 it became of sufficient importance to receive its charter from the House of Burgesses, and was named in honor of Frederick, Prince of Wales, son of George II. The Prince died before ascending the throne, but his son became George III., and it was thus from the domination of the son of the Prince for whom their town was named that the patriotic people of the little village later plotted to free themselves. The act giving the town a charter names John Robinson, Henry Willis, Augustine Smith, John Taliaferro, Henry Beverly, John Waller and Jeremiah Crowder as trustees, and the streets were named for members of the Royal family, names which fortunately endure today, despite an attempt made some years ago to modernize the town and discard the beautiful and significant old names in favor of the less distinguished and uglier method of numerical and alphabetical designations.

Settlers now were rapidly coming into the community which was growing in importance. In 1732, Colonel Byrd owner of vast tracts where now stands the magnificent city of Richmond, an important man in the Colonial life of Virginia, came to Fredericksburg, calling on his friend, Colonel Henry Willis, “top man of the town,” as Colonel Byrd refers to him in his very interesting account of the visit preserved to posterity. Colonel Byrd was impressed by Fredericksburg, particularly by the stone jail, which, he said, seemed strong enough “to hold Jack Shepherd” and with the versatility of one Sukey Livingstone, or Levinston, doctress and coffee woman. Some believe that the old stone building at the Free Bridge head is the jail referred to.

The seat of justice which had been located at Germanna, was this year moved to Fredericksburg, St. George’s parish established and the church erected, with Rev. Patrick Henry, uncle of the famous orator, as its first rector.

“Town Fairs” Are Begun

In 1738 the House of Burgesses authorized the holding twice annually of town fairs for the sale of cattle, provisions, goods, wares and all kinds of merchandise, and it is easy to understand how these affairs became the most important events in the life of the village, attracting plantation owners from miles and taking on a social as well as business aspect. And as the act also provided that all persons attending these fairs should be immune from arrest for two days previous and two days subsequent to the events, except for capital offenses or breaches of the peace, suits, controversies and quarrels that might arise during the events, it can well be imagined that they were lively and exciting gatherings.

One year later the trustees found it necessary to purchase additional land for the accommodation of the growing population but a bargain was struck with Henry Willis, “the top man of the town,” and John Lewis only after the House of Burgesses had taken up the matter deciding the ownership of the lands in question and fixing the sum to be paid Willis at fifteen pounds and Lewis at five pounds, not a bad total price, considering the survey shows that only three acres were bought.

Masonry Is Established

The town had now grown to such importance as a trading point that the establishment of direct connections with the Stafford shore was made necessary, and in 1748 the first ferry was authorized by law. Evidently from this time forward the town began to forge ahead of its thriving neighbor, Falmouth, for the lessened expense of transferring grain directly to the waiting ships made it more attractive as a market and many of the up-country people who formerly had sold their gain and traded in Falmouth, now crossed on the ferry and spent their money with the merchants of Fredericksburg. The establishment of Masonry in 1752, at which time the lodge was known as “The Lodge of Fredericksburg,” points to the growing importance of the place; and that the Colonial citizens were keenly alive to the benefits to be derived from attracting industry to their towns is attested to by an act of the General Assembly, passed in 1759, to encourage the arts and manufactury in the Colonies, which set up a premium of five hundred pounds to be awarded the citizen making the best ten hogsheads of wine in any one year, within eight years from the passage of the act. A number of citizens of the town contributed to the fund, among them George Washington, who gave two pounds.